“All these considerations induce your Committee to give this measure their full approbation; and that such a necessary object has not been sooner attained, must rather have proceeded from the supposed difficulty of the execution, than any hesitation as to the expediency of it. “Your Committee, in reply to that part of the letter of the Commissioners, in which the Traffickers of Leith are required to signify, in the event of their concurrence in the measure, whether they will support the application of the Commissioners by petition to Parliament, have again to state, that giving, as they do, their full approbation to the expediency of erecting a light-house on the Bell Rock, they can have no hesitation in joining in any petition to Parliament to that effect. But the funds of this Incorporation being appropriated to specific purposes, no pecuniary aid can be afforded by them as a Society. “To so great a national benefit as this will certainly prove, they will contribute, by willingly submitting to a tax on all shipping passing the Bell Rock, provided the duty so imposed does not exceed that laid on for any light in England, whose situation may bear resemblance to that to be erected upon the Bell Rock. “The Trinity-House of Leith, to whom, the Committee is informed, the Commissioners have likewise applied, must be supposed better qualified to give detailed information upon the whole of this subject than your Committee; and the more especially, as one among their number has, for a period exceeding twenty years, made the dangers of the Bell Rock, and the means to be applied to avoid or lessen them, his peculiar study. Captain Joseph Brodie has, at great risk, and certainly at no little expence, and without any expectation of recompence, beyond that of having served his country, frequently visited the Bell Rock, and at one time succeeded in erecting a Beacon upon it, which withstood the fury of the sea for several months. “The Committee, therefore, consider him well qualified to give the Commissioners information on the subject; and the various models of light-houses applicable to this rock, which, with much labour and ingenuity, he has invented, will be found highly valuable, whenever the execution of the business shall come to be taken into final consideration.--(Signed) James Searth, Master; Wm. Mowbray, Assist.; Wm. Dougal, Assist.; Arch. Geddes, James Pillans _junior_.” [Sidenote: Report of the Merchants of Berwick.]